Torture is a War Crime

Journey for Humanity and Accountability, Day 5
By Cindy Sheehan

Today our Journey took us to Ft. Benning, Ga, where the cancer of the School of Americas (WINSEC) is housed. I have written on torture before and I believe that BushCo's policy of imprisoning people without their basic due process and torturing them is one of the grossest breeches of international and American law and one of the overriding reasons that they should
be impeached.

The School of Torture has graduated many egregious violators of human rights like Panamanian drug lord, U.S. CIA employee, and Bush family friend (until he became an enemy), Manuel Noriega. If there is one issue that should unite Americans it should be against torture. Incredibly, we still have neighbors in our communities who believe that torture is correct,
humane and valuable. However to say torture is "wrong" is like saying the sky is blue. Torture is inherently wrong. Torture is pure evil. Torture is an abomination. Torture is disordered and demented. Torture is sick, sick, sick!

Most significantly the people who are being tortured
in such prison camps as Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib were
mostly sold to the US Army by bounty hunters and the
Northern Aliance. Criminal charges against the
prisoners are as rare as the truth in the Bush Regime.
Most reasonable people would agree that information
gleaned from such awfully brutal means
(water-boarding, stress positions, extreme noise and
temperatures, sodomy and other sexual humiliation,
electrodes on genitalia, etc) is never reliable. I
can't even fathom the sick, sadistic minds of the Bush
Regime who not only have authorized and
institutionalized this behavior but also refuse to end
it and close the camps that have undermined any moral
authority the US may have had.

Torture not only dehumanizes the tortured, but the
torturer. It hurts my heart deeply to think of our
young soldiers carrying out such ruthless acts on
other humans who for the most part were in the wrong
place at the wrong time and do not know where Osama
bin Laden is hiding. Torture only compromises our
soldiers' lives in the field as the US cannot credibly
claim any kind of moral high ground if one of our
soldiers is tragically captured. The abomination of
Abu Ghraib is one of the reasons that the insurgency
began on the day Casey was killed in Sadr City,
Baghdad. I personally know three men who were
illegally and wrongly imprisoned in Guantanamo and Abu
Ghraib who can testify to the fact that, yes, America
does torture and does so with extreme, callous and
cold-hearted cruelty.

The Geneva Conventions are clear on prohibiting the
use of torture and the 8th Amendment to our own
Constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.
When torture is official policy, where will it end?
When George can pick and choose who receives the
centuries old right to habeas corpus and who doesn't,
where will it end? Will it end with the "terrorists"
in Guantanamo or will it be used here in the USA
against those who stand up against tyranny and
struggle for our Constitution, freedoms, peace and
human rights?

Torture has tarnished the soul of our nation and
Congress has done little to restrain BushCo's
Torquemadas and even when a bill is passed restricting
the use of torture, George adds a signing statement
saying that he is above the law. BushCo is no better
than a crime cabal and they must be Consitutionally
controlled.

Apparently impeachment is the only remedy for torture
and will go a long way to elevating our country's
standing in the international community and to healing
our broken nation. Impeachment is not an optional menu
item that can be set on a table but a Constitutionally
mandated requirement (See section II, Article IV).

Put it back on the table, Ms. Pelosi. We have over a
million signatures on petitions demanding that
Congress end the misery of our nation and world by
impeaching George Bush and Dick Cheney.

As I was reading your article on torture, I kept thinking to myself what kind of a person could ever condone such a thing? I than thought of George Bush chuckling as he told of a woman inmate on death row pleading with him to spare her life. I think I answered my own question.

...strangers on the street, "Is torture an American Principle?" "Is warrantless wiretapping Americans, an American Principle." etc. You would be surprised at how many people agree... with the Constitution and the impeachment movement.

but if you ever wore a uniform, you once stuck your hand on a bible and you took a fucking oath to "UPHOLD THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES" and to "DEFEND AGAINST ALL ENEMIES, FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC" and when you take that fucking uniform off, you are NEVER GODDAMNED ABSOLVED OF THAT OATH YOU TOOK..

whether you believe in God or not, every single son of a bitch who served this nation in uniform still must abide by that oath, and that oath, deeply embedded in it, says; "thou shalt not torture, or bring dishonor upon yourself or your nation" and any son of a bitch in this country who either absolves torture or ameliorates the torture with their "oh well, it's okay if it's THEM we're torturing" better get your heads out of your asses and realize that if this government does it to the 'enemy', according to this son of a bitch in the Whore House, about 75 percent of us now are the fucking 'enemy' and can and will be 'tortured' by these bastards when the nation slides into a total and unbridled, totalitarian nightmarish hell called DICTATORSHIP UNDER A MORON BASTARD DICTATOR..

there is no goddamned excuse for this 'torture is okay' mentality, not anywhere on this continent, or in any space controlled by this government, and until this government is totally dismantled and cleansed from the top down to STOP THIS MADNESS, nobody on this continent ever dare bitch about any citizen of this nation coming to harm anywhere on this globe, for we have indeed become what we once fought in Nazi Germany and other parts of Europe in World War II..

goddamned you sons of bitches, don't you ever say torture is okay on this continent in any U.S. gulag, it's goddamned never acceptable..ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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